THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 1-06-02

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 1-06-02; The Thin Red Lines

By Daniel Zalewski

Published: January 6, 2002

In the classic 1955 heist film ''Rififi,'' some crooks gather one night to see if they can outsmart the security system protecting a Parisian jewelry shop. One thief observes that the store is equipped with an alarm featuring diabolical new technology: motion detectors! Sighing, he laments, ''It's getting harder to make a living.''

His fear is unfounded, of course; cinematic crooks have always figured out how to circumvent electronic affronts to their profession. Indeed, the scheme the thieves devise -- involving simple props like a fire extinguisher and an umbrella -- is so cunning, yet so plausible, that the film was banned in several countries out of fear that it might inspire real robberies.

Somehow, I doubt the feds are sweating it out over ''Ocean's Eleven,'' in which George Clooney and company raid three casinos not with the aid of an umbrella but with the help of a nuclear-energy device capable of instantly shorting out the Las Vegas power grid, not to mention a shimmering stage-set simulacrum of the casinos' elaborate vault. (Whoops, I forgot about the Chinese contortionist who can leap balletically over infrared beams.)

''Ocean's Eleven'' doesn't bother with constructing a convincing caper; it's a technological steamroller. One of the biggest hits of 2001, it was a fittingly absurd climax to a year that, remarkably, featured more than a dozen pretzel-plotted heist films -- including ''The Score,'' ''Heist,'' ''Swordfish,'' ''Sexy Beast,'' ''Tomb Raider,'' ''Bandits'' and ''Snatch.'' Like overdone fireworks displays that leave you longing for empty sky, almost all of these heist movies were mechanized spectacles that rattled your senses instead of blowing your mind.

It's a shame, because heist movies used to be the smartest kind of action thriller. Witnessing the birth of a dazzlingly ingenious plan (even if it goes awry in the execution) was once central to a genre that was fundamentally about innovation and intellectual gamesmanship. But the capers in today's films lack elegance: the scheme is either a contorted jumble of old tricks -- what the scriptwriter would probably call a ''postmodern homage'' -- or a gizmo-laden blur in which technology costing more than the loot itself is deployed with tedious efficiency.

Lacking a clever caper, these films resort to frantic collages of cliché: a nonsensical montage of stolen blueprints; a sexy shot of a hacker's eyeglasses, which reflect the bank-security codes whizzing across his laptop screen; a moody close-up of the cat's cradle of red lasers that inevitably frames the priceless gem. Despite such obvious patchwork, however, almost all of 2001's heist movies were hits -- making me feel for the first time like one of those grouchy, seen-it-all spoilsports. How many times can audiences enjoy watching black-leather-clad criminals rappelling through bank vaults like chic rock climbers? Who still gets a jolt from the perfunctory double cross, in which the bag with the jeweled scepter turns out to contain a lead pipe (''The Score'') or the gold ingots turn out to be worthless washers (''Heist'')? Isn't anyone else bored by the gambit of using a computer to override a vault's internal video-surveillance system (''Ocean's Eleven'' and ''The Score'')?

Some of the lazy plotting in modern heist films can, I think, be blamed on our Palm Pilot world, in which gadgety solutions seem to be available for every problem. Technological innovation may make our lives more convenient, but it can also stifle the imagination. Let's say you've created a scenario in which your crook is hiding in the sewers below a vault, and somehow needs to find out if the guard's still milling around upstairs. A scriptwriter could rack his brain for days trying to engineer a deft solution -- or he could just hand his thief a retractable-periscope video camera, like the one Robert De Niro uses in ''The Score.''

Alternatively, one might argue that modern security systems have ruined the credibility of the heist film. Could anyone really penetrate the baroquely fortified vaults of the Bellagio casino without resorting to $30 million worth of gadgetry? Maybe not. Then again, the advance of high technology has hardly rendered inspired criminal responses obsolete. To cite a grim example, think of how terrorists have, using comparatively limited funds, continually subverted X-ray machines and other forms of airline security. Most recently, a diabolically simple ruse -- placing rubber explosives inside sneakers -- almost blew up an airplane.

What the heist genre really needs is a computer-literate screenwriter who can stage a fabulous electronic heist. After all, that's how real thieves do it nowadays. (Remember Abraham Abdallah, the Brooklyn man arrested last March for using a computer at his local library to break into the bank accounts of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey? That's a score!) Unfortunately, Hollywood has so far bungled its approach to cybercrime. Consider last summer's ''Swordfish,'' whose creators clearly had no sense of the hacker's craft. Instead of showing us the stratagems Hugh Jackman's character uses to crack codes, the script simply has him pound on his computer like a coked-up pianist. When Jackman steals billions, it fails to thrill, for we have no idea how he has done it. And isn't that the point of heist movies -- to offer a tantalizing glimpse inside the criminal mind?

Until someone learns how to make the hacker heist exciting, we can expect more stale retreads featuring decoy suitcases and welding thingamajigs. After all, audiences clearly love the form. Even when they're brain-dead, heist films offer singular pleasures: they let you root for bad guys and fantasize about striking it rich. But without an intricate caper that elevates robbery into art, a heist movie is a hollow affair. No matter how huge the haul, there's simply no payoff.

Photo (Film still from ''Ocean's Eleven'': Photofest) Chart: ''Director's Cut'' ''The direction is a marvel of skill and inventiveness.+. . .+ Every shot answers the viewer's question, 'How?' [The director Jules] Dassin remains faithful to his style of combining the documentary approach with lyricism. For the past week, the only thing being talked about in Paris was the silent holdup, splendidly soundtracked, in which objects, movements and glances create an extraordinary ballet around an umbrella placed over a hole pierced through the ceiling of a jewelry store alive with security systems.'' Francois Truffaut on the movie ''Rififi,'' from ''The Films in My Life''